


Control.

by apiphile



Category: Hardcore Logo
Genre: Character Study, Non-Linear Narrativenear Narrative, Other, Post-Film, post-death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-09
Updated: 2010-03-09
Packaged: 2017-10-07 20:25:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,204
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/68915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apiphile/pseuds/apiphile
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The question of who is in control is never as clear as it looks at first.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Control.

**Author's Note:**

> Owes a debt to _Xeriscape_.

Because Joe is a control freak.

It's taken years to really understand what that means, and it doesn't seem likely his dreams will ever master the _past tense_, but that's the answer to everything now. No need for other excuses. Joe is (was) a control freak. Joe Control Freak Dick. Saw it in himself when he gave himself the epithet. _Dick_ \- arrogant, unwavering, temperamental (sexual).

Melinda is the first soft thing in Billy's life. She calls him Will, William, Bill, Billy. In his dreams he answers to Billiam, the name he has because one nickname was never enough for Joe; there was William Boisy, that his family knew, and there was Billy Tallent, that their fans knew, and then there was Billiam, Joe's creation. Joe's property.

Maybe Little Billie (she is getting tall; sometimes she picks up the phone but mostly he gets Mary and hangs up, the weight of _what she knows_ like an anvil on him) will be smarter than her mom, and not follow men who are lost in their egos and their music and their drugs and their misery. Maybe she'll be smarter than her dad, too, and not let herself be followed, not by anyone.

Realistically, the kid doesn't stand a fucking chance.

That's always just how it is (was), Billy running away and Joe chasing. Joe confronting. Joe yelling. Joe taking swings at him and barely connecting. He's sketched the scenes in his head – Billy the hunted, Joe the hunter – but when he sleeps Billy holds a fishing line and drags this angry, blundering Joe-fish bleeding along behind him in the weeds and the dirt. He knows it's not that simple, it's not that hunter/hunted dichotomy (it is this simple).

People say (said) they were fire and ice, because people are fucking dumb, as dumb as Joe always asserted, dumber. Fucking dumb. They saw Joe Dick, volcano god, and unmeltable ice king (queen) Billy Tallent, but Billy knows they were fire and …fuck, air. Air. Inconstant, vanishing Billy given light by the way he interacted with Joe Dick, Joe the consuming, Joe the dangerous, Joe the finite.

Joe made Billy visible and Billy's never sure whether he should thank him or hate him for that; Joe needed Billy just to exist.

That's the hell of it. It's always been obvious to anyone, anyone but him, that Joe needed Billy and Billy didn't need Joe, and it's more obvious now, on account of Joe being dead with a bullet in his raging imperfect brains and Billy still walking.

That he's sleep-walking isn't relevant.

That he's walking in the dark is immaterial. When he _left_, when he _ran_, when Hardcore Logo imploded the first time, Joe Dick was a brand on his consciousness, a nagging pain in the back of his eyeball, a match struck somewhere up north in the winter nights. Billy knew he was out there, every day. And somehow nothing could be worse than having Joe Dick be the unseen wasp in the room, but Billy was wrong. There was always something worse.

Now he's walking in the dark and the cold, Billy Tallent, ice or air, free of restraints. No watchful eyes on him. Now he gets up onto the stage, the stages (bigger stages, bigger audiences) and plays and no one smacks him with the mike stand or snarls at him or sprays cheap shit booze in his face.

No one consumes him and says 'us' instead of 'you'.

Melinda is soft and comforting by his side and the Los Angeles nights are the kind of hot and stuffy that inspires affairs.

There was a photo from his Hardcore Logo days in a 'zine, one that John (Ox now, Ox) sent him. No message. Just the 'zine, scuffed with boot-marks, like John (Ox) found it on the roadside somewhere. Fuck, it was _John_, he probably _had_.

And the grainy photo: Billy motherfucking Tallent prophesying doom (Something's Gonna Die Tonight) and flailing at his guitar like he and it were drowning. Joe Dick above the music. Joe Dick, his eyes, his body, always angled in one direction.

Billy tore it up and flushed the shreds and dreamed that he'd poked Joe's eyes out with the base of a mike stand. Didn't feel guilty, just cold and sweaty when he woke, and Melinda had all the covers and the thermometer on the wall said something much more obscene than anything Billy'd ever managed.

_Billiam_ is still Joe's. That's what Joe does (did), he comes up and snatches part of you away – usually the part you were using – right out of your hands. And that part ended up Joe's, no matter what you thought, what you said, what you did. Fine. Fine. Joe can keep Billiam, Billiam's as fucking dead as Joe and Joe's shattered skull. There are twin bullet burrows, one in a man's head and the other through a rotten idea (through a man's heart).

Melinda understands he doesn't visit the grave. They parted on bad terms. And there's nothing, nothing there. Yeah, those freak fans, Melinda says. Who the fuck steals a corpse. But Billy knows where Joe's body is makes no difference (beside him, behind him, inside him, around him) in the end, what's _Joe_ is long departed. No pathetic fan voodoo will return the ego and the spit and the fire.

"Bucky."  
"Billy. I told you not to call."  
"I know."  
"Hurry up and die like your leech friend, Billy."  
"I can't."  
"Then you're a pussy."  
_click_

How it's always been; when Billy ran, Joe caught him or called him back. Billy never ran away without being chased, never turned his back without someone watching it, never left without being dragged by his collar (his gut) back to where he'd run from. Billy always had Joe, no choice, no question. No escape.

And when Joe finally ran he made fucking sure Billy couldn't run after him. Or he made fucking sure he wouldn't have to see Billy _not_ running after him.

The thermometer lies to Billy's cold night sweats. Billy's half-sleeping brain asks who chased Joe.

Because Joe is (was) a control freak. Because Joe is (_was_) fire, sucking Billy into his orbit with no chance of escape, sucking him in (sucking him off. Billy's clenched fists. Damp heavy silence. Nights longer than months). Because it was always Billy being chased, and never him chasing. Because Joe was always behind him no matter where he went. Because Joe Dick was a cokehead fuckhead arrogant dick control freak (because without Joe, Billy is out of anyone's control).

He wakes at 4am, the same 4am every time, listening to the echoes of a gunshot that he never heard, and there's no one in his head but him. A him that sounds like Joe on occasion, hate and spite and control (his arm over Billy's shoulder like a yoke while they talked to those girls, his arm screaming MINE MINE MINE as eloquently as his mouth talked typical Joe Dick-bullshit), a him that sounded like Joe when he spoke.

But Joe isn't in control anymore, and Billy has to speak with his own voice, his own words. Just as soon as he figures out how.


End file.
